Ambassador Sohn Won-yil
Lee Ki-jo and his party landed at Los Angeles Airport and, without a moment's rest, boarded a domestic flight for New York. Minister-Counselor Han Pyo-wook, who had come out to meet them, flew on in their company. Once they reached New York, he showed the party to a small hotel and apologized.
"I'm afraid the embassy budget would stretch no further than a hotel of this sort."
"Not at all. It's perfectly fine."
Ki-jo thanked him. Han Pyo-wook had studied diplomacy at Harvard, a brilliant man who remained posted in the United States even as ambassadors came and went—the hidden power, in effect, behind the Korean Embassy in Washington. Exhausted as he was from the long flight, Ki-jo tried to take the minister to dinner, but Han refused, saying he could not accept hospitality from a guest, and returned to Washington. He was as clean-handed as his reputation had suggested. In those days, when a businessman received help abroad from a diplomat stationed there, it was basic courtesy to entertain him. Watching the man decline with quiet dignity, do only what he had come to do, and turn away, Ki-jo felt his instincts stir in the man's favor. Minister Han would be a crucial figure in his strategy for America.
Ki-jo and the other three went up to the rooms the embassy had reserved. Hwang Tae-young, who had been to New York on business before, led the way with easy familiarity, and this time Ki-jo had decided to share a room with him. The hotel was shabby, but the room had a television and two single beds. That there was a bed at all—somewhere a man could stretch out flat, if only for a few hours—felt like more than he deserved.
They were bone-tired, yet they switched on the set and talked as they watched an American broadcast.
"I wish we could put on a show that splendid."
Hwang said it with his eyes on the program flickering across the tube.
"Within a few years I mean to move the station. We'll have to put up a new building—larger, and with more room."
Ki-jo answered from the bed, lying at his ease, gaze on the screen. The DBC building they were using now was too old and too small. It had not even been built as a broadcast station, and the studio was painfully cramped.
"I'd like at least three studios. Large, medium, and small."
"So would I. I've been thinking the same."
At that, Hwang went on as if he could already see a bright future taking shape.
"I hope we build the station on Namsan. Raise a transmission tower on the summit, and we could send the signal much farther than we can now."
It was exactly the sort of thing a technical president would say.
"Good. I don't think there's a better site than Namsan."
Ki-jo agreed, one arm folded under his head for a pillow. KBS, too, built on Namsan to take advantage of the ground.
Hwang worked at one shoulder with his hand, as if the muscle had knotted.
"A few years ago I came to New York alone, to negotiate with RCA. You remember."
"That must have felt hopeless."
"It did. Nothing but hopeless. I had no confidence in myself, and I was afraid. This time is different. Coming with you, President Lee, I feel as if we might actually accomplish all of it."
Ki-jo answered with a smile.
"Ambassador Yang You-chan hasn't shown so much as his face this time, though. When I was bringing in American equipment from RCA, he at least came to see me."
Ki-jo thought he knew why. Unlike Hwang's last visit, there was no concession here for the ambassador to get his hands on.
He did not think well of Ambassador Yang. The man was Syngman Rhee's disciple and, overseas, the regime's trumpet, forever justifying the president's dictatorship. Whenever the American press found fault with Rhee, Yang insisted that nothing else could be done if one meant to fight communism, and that such criticism was a smear put about by communists. His other specialty was inserting himself into profitable deals. Whenever there was business in bringing goods from the United States into Korea, he made a point of getting involved.
The construction of the Chungju fertilizer plant and the import of American passenger railcars were the representative cases, both shadowed by suspicions of corruption. The Chungju contract had been struck on terms more favorable to the builder, McGraw & Company, than to the Korean government, and witness after witness placed Ambassador Yang behind the arrangement. In the railcar purchase, it was alleged that the bidding specifications themselves had been altered so a Korean-American businessman close to him could take the contract.
Until Rhee seated him as ambassador, Yang had been director of a thriving hospital in Hawaii, prosperous enough to keep several Chinese physicians on staff. The story went that, because taking the post had forced him to step back from his business, Rhee indulged these interventions as a kind of compensation. Even so, Ki-jo would have to work with a man like that.
"President Hwang."
"Yes, President."
"If we succeed in securing loans from West Germany, I'll be meeting Ambassador Yang as well. We'll need a great deal of his help, so try not to take it too much to heart. He did see to the hotel rooms, after all."
"That's true. I only said it because I wondered whether it was right to treat a special envoy sent by His Excellency President Syngman Rhee with such indifference."
Hwang said it with a laugh.
"You've met him before, so be as warm with him as you can."
"I will."
They talked on, and without either of them quite meaning to, fell asleep with the television still playing.
The next morning the party rose at dawn, left the hotel without a proper wash, and hurried to New York International Airport. The terminal was vast and glittering, but they had no time to marvel at it before they were aboard the flight for West Germany.
The moment they boarded, the eyes of the white passengers found them. Four East Asian men appearing in the cabin were enough to draw open, curious stares. The four paid the looks no mind. They dropped into their seats and were asleep at once; a single night in a New York hotel had not been enough to shake off the weariness of a long-haul flight.
Another long flight began, and when at last they reached West Germany, all four men stepped off the plane with their faces swollen from sleep. They cleared immigration at Cologne Airport, and the instant they came out into the arrivals hall, Ambassador Sohn Won-yil was there.
Oh Yang-soo reached him first, catching the ambassador's hand in both of his.
"Admiral! It's so good to see you."
"Come now—I'm an ambassador these days, not an admiral. You've come a long way. It must have been hard."
Ambassador Sohn turned next to Ki-jo and shook his hand.
"President Lee. This is the second time we meet. That officer who was falsely accused—was the matter resolved?"
"Thanks to you, it was. I'm grateful for your help."
"I'm glad it worked out."
When Ki-jo had finished his greetings, Baek Young-hoon embraced the ambassador.
"Ambassador. To see you again—I'm so happy I hardly know what to say."
Baek's eyes were full of tears. Sohn, visibly moved himself, patted his back.
"Welcome. When I heard you were coming back to Germany, I waited eagerly."
Ki-jo knew why the two of them were so glad of each other. Baek Young-hoon had gone to West Germany to study and earned his doctorate, only to find himself stranded, unable to scrape together the fare home. In desperation he had sought out Ambassador Sohn. Hearing the wretched story, Sohn had wanted to help the poor student, but he himself had no money with which to send Baek back. He contacted Syngman Rhee and asked for the price of a plane ticket. Rhee willingly sent the money for the young man who had taken a doctorate in economics in West Germany, and Baek had only just managed to return. It was a story from an age so poor that the ambassador of a nation could not afford to send even one student home.
"Because of you, Ambassador, I was able to work as a university professor. Thank you."
"What are you saying? It's only natural that a man who studied in Germany should become a professor."
Sohn clapped Baek on the shoulder, his face bright with feeling. Watching them, Ki-jo, Oh Yang-soo, and Hwang Tae-young felt their own eyes sting.
After introducing Hwang to the ambassador, Ki-jo set off with him for the Korean Embassy in Bonn. Cologne to Bonn was forty minutes, and Ambassador Sohn rode the train with them. He was the ambassador of a country, and he had no car. Hard as the comparison was, a Republic of Korea ambassador in those days lived more poorly than a corporate expatriate does now.
When they stopped in front of the embassy, Ki-jo was startled by the building. Without the plaque, there would have been nothing to say if someone called it an ordinary German house.
"It may look like this, but the inside is all right. The West German government helped us find the house. It's serviceable."
Ambassador Sohn offered the brief account of the building, and when they stepped inside, his wife came forward to greet the party. There were two staff members as well. The ground floor seemed to serve as the office; upstairs, the ambassador and his wife and the staff apparently lived. The conditions were painful to see—hardly what anyone could call the embassy of a nation. Oh Yang-soo and Hwang Tae-young did not seem to feel it that way. The mere fact that Korea had an embassy in Germany appeared to move them, and to make them proud.
"Set your bags down first, then come downstairs. My wife has prepared a meal."
The party was given the room the staff had been using. The staff, it seemed, meant to spread bedding on the ground floor and sleep there. It was awkward, but they were guests, and the kindness had to be accepted.
When they came down after unpacking, a generous supper was waiting: pig's trotters, leafy vegetables for wrapping, cabbage kimchi, and rice cooked from Annam grain, the Vietnamese rice so common on Korean tables in those years.
"The Germans eat pig's trotters too, just as we do," Ambassador Sohn said. "They pickle cabbage as well, something like kimchi."
He seemed to mean Schweinshaxe, the German trotter, and sauerkraut.
"We'll eat gratefully, ma'am."
The party was moved by the Korean-style meal the ambassador and his wife had laid out. The cabbage kimchi had no chili powder—it was pale and sour—but the moment it touched the tongue the mouth cleared, and strength seemed to rise.
After the ample meal the others went to their rooms to rest, but Ki-jo sat with Ambassador Sohn on a bench in a nearby park.
"Ambassador, has an appointment been arranged with Economics Minister Erhard?"
"Of course. Minister Erhard's office contacted us first. It's highly unusual—I was surprised. How did you manage it?"
It was Sohn, in the end, who was curious.
"Thanks to Mr. Hertz, the German ambassador in Seoul."
"I see. In diplomacy, nothing serves better than a personal connection. I'm a military man myself, so I often meet American officers stationed in Germany who fought in the Korean War."
Ki-jo nodded. In those days most of Korea's ambassadors were former soldiers. Retired generals had been posted abroad so that, if a second Korean War broke out, they could request troops from their host countries. Their chief work was less ordinary diplomacy than the cultivation of military cooperation against the day they might have to ask for an expeditionary force.
"I truly envy West Germany."
Ambassador Sohn said it while watching Germans stroll at their leisure through the park.
"We are both divided nations. I cannot understand how we came to be so different."
Whenever he looked upon West Germany's dazzling advance, he said, his heart ached. Korea had been divided through no fault of its own; Germany had been divided as punishment for starting a war—and yet it was the former aggressor that was prospering. He could hardly believe it.
Ki-jo shared the lament, but he answered with hope.
"Ambassador, the day will come when Korea has developed so far that the Germans envy us."
At those words Sohn turned to him, startled. He had never met a single person who claimed Korea could advance as far as Germany. It was an age when neither Koreans nor foreigners could even imagine such a thing.
"You are quite the optimist, President Lee."
"If we keep at it, that day will certainly come. We'll even make things better than the Germans do."
"I wonder... What do we have that surpasses Germany?"
Sohn gazed up at the sky where the sunset was gathering, as if searching his memory for an answer. Ki-jo gave him one.
"Ambassador—aren't Koreans tougher than Germans?"
Sohn stared at him, and then, as if something had suddenly come to mind, his face brightened.
"Now that I think of it, you're right."
The Germans were diligent, he said, and good at their work, but lately they had begun to avoid the hard jobs.
"You mean work like mining, or nursing?"
"Yes. Exactly. You know how things stand in West Germany. That's the very sort of work I mean."
Sohn broke into a deep, easy laugh.
"There will come a day when Koreans come to Germany to work."
Ki-jo had scarcely said it before Sohn agreed, firmly.
"I hope so. Work a single month in Germany, and you go home with what an ordinary man needs to live on for a year in Korea."
He added that if Koreans working in Germany remitted even a portion of what they earned, it would be an enormous earning of foreign exchange. Ki-jo waited for the next sentence—then we ought to send Koreans over as workers. It never left Sohn's mouth. He seemed to be thinking that one could hardly put Koreans to work in a Germany where they could not even speak the language. No one, yet, could imagine such a thing.
The two of them talked until the sun went down, then returned to the embassy. This time Ki-jo shared a room with Oh Yang-soo. When he opened the door, Oh was already asleep on bedding spread over the floor. Ki-jo had told him to take the bed, but Oh had lain down on the floor first. He thought of waking him and sending him up onto the mattress, but the man was sleeping so soundly that he could not bring himself to do it. There was nothing for it. Ki-jo lay down on the bed, and the moment his body settled, he was gone.